Heating at your fingertips with tado°

Paul Hughes

Heating at your fingertips with tado°

11.03.2013

Customers of the Munich-based high-tech start-up tado° can now stay informed about how tado° is intelligently controlling their heating system by using an intuitive report function.

Since November 2012 tado° has offered the world's first geolocation app that lets a heating system know where the residents are and makes sure that the home is only warmed up when actually necessary. This means customers can save money while helping to protect the environment. Along with the app, which can be downloaded for iOS or Android platforms, users order a free hardware box that can be simply installed at home.

Using the mobile app on their smartphone or the web app from their computer, users have access to their tado° system and can see how tado° is controlling their heating at any time. Settings can be altered quickly and simply. For instance, sleeping times can be set when tado° turns down the heating to the desired temperature or, for users without a smartphone, an intuitive schedule can be set up with the times they will be at home, out of the house and sleeping. The app also allows users to control their heating settings manually.

"Now we are offering our users an even better service. Previously the start screen of the web application always displayed the current inside temperature for the customer's home and their local outside temperature. Now our users can access a detailed report – any time and from anywhere in the world – that gives them an overview of how tado° is working for them and how their energy consumption is being optimised," says Christian Deilmann, Founder and CEO of tado°.

The report function displays the temperature curve for the last 24 hours or the last 7 days. Depending on how closely the user wants to examine the actions of their tado° system, they can select a timeline divided into hours or days. The heating activity is also displayed in this overview. Dark blue areas show that the home was heated during this time. The coloured symbols indicate what events have occurred and how tado° has controlled the heating system accordingly. A simple click on any particular symbol brings up further information on why tado° switched to a certain mode. For instance, when the last resident has left the house tado° switches to Away mode and lowers the temperature. In the report this event is represented by a white person upon a green symbol, and this is accompanied by a downward temperature curve.

"As the next step we want to offer our customers even greater transparency by forecasting their heating costs for the coming weeks and months as well as showing their recent cost history. For example, a reduction of the night time temperature will be reflected instantly in a lower cost forecast for the next month," says Christian Deilmann.